Catholic Citizens & the Temptation of Hypernationalism

St. Augustine saw history with far more sobriety and far less self-importance than the average politician. Let’s consider some of his wisdom. In The City of God he describes two cities moving through history, one formed by the love of God, and the other formed by disordered self-love. He insists that these two cities — the Civitas Dei (Heavenly City or City of God) and the Civitas Terrena (Earthly City or City of Man) — remain intermingled in this world until the final judgment. The point is severe and liberating at once: No earthly regime is the Kingdom of God, and no party platform is the Beatific Vision. Our commonwealth, as St. Paul says, “is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20).

Augustine’s two cities give us the grammar for sanity. The Civitas Dei is the communion of those who belong to Christ. The Civitas Terrena is every social order shaped by pride and lust for domination. The Christian thus lives in a land, serves a people, honors lawful authority, and loves his homeland, yet he never confuses the republic with the redeemed order. He may improve the Civitas Terrena through virtue, sacrifice, and civic service, yet he seeks final peace only in God. He votes discerningly, speaks truthfully, labors diligently, and then goes home remembering that Caesar still dies and Christ still reigns. This is why the Christian can be a serious citizen without becoming a political idolater.

This illuminates the difference between patriotism and hypernationalism, a difference our age badly needs to recognize, as too many people today drape every appetite in a flag and call it virtue. Patriotism in the Catholic tradition is a moral duty ordered by charity and justice. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that “the love and service of one’s country follow from the duty of gratitude and belong to the order of charity,” and that citizens must contribute to the good of society in “a spirit of truth, justice, solidarity, and freedom” (no. 2239). St. Thomas Aquinas places love of country under the virtue of piety and says piety “pays duty and homage to our parents and country.” Thus, patriotism means rightly ordered love for the land and people through whom we have received language, laws, civic memory, and a public inheritance. Patriotism is grateful, disciplined, and under God.

Hypernationalism is something else. It takes the nation from its proper place and pushes it toward the altar. It absolutizes blood, soil, tribe, ethnicity, regime, or civil mythology. It asks of the soul what only God may ask. It sprinkles religious language over civic self-worship and then wonders why everything begins to smell spiritually diseased. The Church sees the danger plainly. Gaudium et Spes, the Second Vatican Council’s “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,” says citizens should cultivate “a generous and loyal spirit of patriotism” and at the same time avoid narrowness by directing attention to the good of the whole human family (no. 75). Ad Gentes Divinitus, the council’s “Decree on the Mission Activity of the Church,” goes further by calling Christians to be “true and effective patriots” while “avoiding racial prejudice and hypernationalism” (no. 15). The council fathers did us a favor by using direct language before politicians discovered the trick of sanctifying ego with campaign merchandise.